


Casual Simplicity

by SapphicScholar



Category: Grace and Frankie (TV)
Genre: F/F, Fix-it fic, Fluff with feelings, Grace-centric, Season/Series 05
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-22
Updated: 2019-06-22
Packaged: 2020-05-16 12:13:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19317955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SapphicScholar/pseuds/SapphicScholar
Summary: "There’s nothing simple about that need. There are no straightforward lines where Frankie can do x or be y to fulfill z. It’s a need mingled with pangs of annoyance and frustration and anger but wrapped up in what Grace is finally realizing is love, and somehow that outweighs everything else, makes it simple even when it’s not."Or a fix-it fic for 5x12 and 5x13 where Grace doesn't marry Nick





	Casual Simplicity

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: I apologize if this has already been done and I haven’t gotten to read that particular fic yet!
> 
> A/N 2: Title borrowed from the last line of Emily Dickinson's F1570 (because the one thing I'm more passionate about than femslash is queer 19th C. literature)

“Marry me.” 

They’re words Grace never expected to hear again, not after 40 years of a loveless marriage came crumbling down around her, the husband she’d tolerated for so long apparently deciding that the years she gave him weren’t enough to make up for that “more” he’d gone chasing in another man’s arms, sneaking away on long “business trips” and leaving her alone with the children she’d come to love but had never wanted for her own sake. But the words are real. Nick is real, sitting there, right in front of her, looking perfectly handsome in a tailored suit from a designer that Grace has heard of and approves of. But the words—they have to be a joke, and she says as much.

Only Nick doesn’t leave. He stays there, telling her he doesn’t care if it’s crazy; he wants to marry her anyway. There’s an answer for every question, even that  _ why _ that Grace has tried to avoid thinking too hard about when it comes to most of her romantic decisions. But Nick smiles up at her, more guileless than he’ll ever be during the business day, and tells her it’s simple, says, “I love you,” says, “I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”

And there’s something so damn attractive about simple. 

Robert had seemed simple. He was a lawyer from a wealthy family with a charming smile and an easy laugh. He was a perfect gentleman on their dates, never pushing her to do things she didn’t want to do—later, she’ll wonder if all those years of polite manners were just repression dressed up in bourgeois niceties. When he asked her to marry him, neither of them asked why, neither of them wondered if it would be enough, if it would be the kind of love that sent them reeling. They fit. Socially, politically, financially, hell, even aesthetically—Robert’s taller, slightly stockier frame the perfect accessory to finish off Grace’s ensembles, right along with all shimmering, pre-packed gift jewelry that accentuated prominent collar bones and thin wrists and long, perfectly manicured fingers. 

Simple makes sense. Simple is Byron telling Grace she’s “smokin’ hot” and sweeping her off her feet—quite literally—his desire plain for the world to see. Simple is the way her body had reacted to that show of need, of someone wanting her so clearly, so straightforwardly, at least until her mind caught up with her. 

Everything with Nick would be simple. Problems would be purchased and turned into solutions or made to disappear. Love would be something declared in clear prose. Meals would appear and could be ignored in turn, the dishes vanishing and leftovers sliding down a garbage disposal that would never be clogged with paint or dirt or the DVR remote that had gone missing weeks ago. Sex would happen on a semi-regular basis and would continue to be semi-good, and Vybrant, promising older women that they could enjoy genuinely fulfilling sexual pleasure, would continue to flourish, and never would she let herself hold those two things up side-by-side for a comparison that might show her things she didn’t want to see. 

Grace leans over and kisses Nick, hoping it’s answer enough when she can’t make her mouth form the sounds needed to agree to this next simple step. He cups her jaw and kisses her, smiling into it, and it isn’t Byron’s rough hands, but it’s real. It isn’t some video broadcast to the whole Internet talking about kisses that never happened—kisses offered in jest and discussed in public and penciled into Grace’s otherwise pristine planner in all capital letters, but never a real option.

As Grace walks down the beach, tucked into Nick’s side, she finally manages a, “Yes.” And that settles it. Because Nick doesn’t offer things he doesn’t mean. He doesn’t proposition someone for years only to laugh—loudly, too loudly—and insist it had been a great big tease all along when they finally start to say yes. 

Only, it turns out that for all his simplicity, Nick wants some of that simplicity in return. He wants someone who will want him back. Can deal with a third player in the game, but not when it becomes clear that player 3 will always be priority 1. 

They’re in the back of Nick’s car, flying down the highway on their way to be married, but all Grace can think about, can talk about, is Frankie. About what Frankie said. About everything Frankie has done. About all the ways Frankie has been telling her, again and again, even after her walking disease of a boyfriend took his yurt and fucked off, that what they have isn’t enough—and why shouldn’t it be enough? Why can’t it be enough? Why is Grace—again, always—being told that what she valued as enough someone else saw as lacking, never the “more” that would somehow make it worthwhile?

Nick shrugs his shoulders, as laissez-faire in his attitude towards Frankie’s behavior as he wants the government to be about his business. “Maybe Kooky wants something that you already have without her.”

“And what the hell would that be?” Grace snaps, yanking her hand free of Nick’s, too annoyed to want his easy comfort right now.

Nick turns to face her head on then, and Grace can see something like resignation in his expression, wonders how she’s fucked another thing up today, all before the sun has even set. “I meant me. A relationship.”

“Oh.” 

Before Grace can get out one of those light, breezy laughs and paper over the fact that she’s forgotten the very thing she’s on her way to concretize in binding, legal documents, Nick takes her hand in his once more. “Maybe I should have listened when you told me this was crazy.”

“Nick.”

“I love you, Grace. I love you, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you. But not when you’ll always be there wondering about someone else.”

“It’s not the same,” Grace insists, her voice cracking as Nick’s words edge close—too close—to the questions that she’s been trying to quiet with pills and drown in vodka. 

“No, it’s not the same. But I think I’m on the losing side here.” 

\---

Hovering on that thin line between still drunk and already hungover that would normally have Grace reaching for either a new drink or an Ambien and a few Advil, Grace pulls her sweater tighter around herself to ward off the chill as she wanders down the beach. The sea lions are quiet now, the breeze barely a whisper in the air. If only Bud and Allison had scheduled their wedding for 4am, then no one would have known that Grace couldn’t make heads or tails of Frankie’s pictionary Post Its. 

The lights are almost all out at the beach house now, though the outside decorations are still up, long strings of fairy lights twinkling in the night sky. Grace knows she could walk back in, go up to her room, and sleep in a bed, but after hours of drunken contemplation alone, she isn’t quite sure she deserves it. Yes, Frankie had left stupid notes that made no fucking sense, but Grace could have asked, could have dealt with Joan Margaret and gotten on Frankie’s calendar, or pulled a Frankie and scrawled her name across the entire day (and she thinks Frankie may well have honored such a request). Instead, she’d assumed that Frankie was being, well, Kooky—and the caricature of Kooky that Nick thought he knew, not the slightly kooky but also brilliant, caring, warm woman Grace had come to know over the years. 

Of course, there’s still anger there, too. Anger at Frankie for thinking that her life only meant something if she drank disgusting cacao and slept in a yurt on a beachfront in La Jolla and stole the Whole Foods groceries Grace was still buying for her and acted like somehow it was all enlightened because some man who smelled like feet and patchouli told her it was. Anger at Frankie for getting stoned and tweeting out promises that would bankrupt the company they’d worked so hard to build together—their refuge in a world that told them they didn’t matter. Anger at Frankie for posting some poorly edited video that made it sound like they were some old lesbian couple selling vibrators and sneaking into one another’s rooms late at night to kiss and test out their merchandise. Anger at Frankie for making her think about those things, making her wonder about those possibilities. 

Then Frankie’s own anger and hurt comes rushing back at her. The betrayal in her voice when she’d seen the store-bought cake—the last straw that seemed to scream into that big empty kitchen: “I don’t trust you to do anything, not even when it comes to your children.” But Grace’s mind keeps returning, again and again, to the big  _ fuck you _ moment—at least the one Frankie named as such. “You ran away with your boyfriend.” Grace absolutely loathes the hope she can feel bubbling up in her chest at the thought that maybe Frankie does see value in what they are together, that maybe Nick hurt Frankie—not because he was a capitalist or a fiscal conservative, but because he was there, with Grace, the new second name to her “Grace and”—as much as the yurt hobo and the version of Jacob who’d decided Santa Fe was a good idea had hurt Grace. 

Eventually Grace settles herself in on a pile of rocks, tries to ignore the aches and pains that have become so much sharper as all the alcohol from earlier fades into the cold sobriety of almost-morning. Closing her eyes, Grace lets her mind drift, thinks about all that might have been had she run off with Nick and gone through with the marriage. Would she be here now? She doubts it. A wife would have been at home in bed with her husband, not sitting on the beach desperately needing to make things right with the woman who’d been her home for the past five years. 

\---

It’s a little after sunrise when Grace sees what she thinks is another figure down the beach. Her eyesight isn’t as bad as Frankie’s, but it certainly isn’t what it once was. Deciding it’s worth the potential humiliation of yelling at a stranger or an inanimate object, Grace stands and starts moving toward the blurry shape, yelling, “Frankie!”

But then the blurry shape is standing and yelling, “Grace!” right back at her.

And she doesn’t care that her knee is screaming, doesn’t care that Grace Hanson most definitely does not run, because her heart is pushing her as fast and as far as she can go—even if it isn’t very far or very fast.

“I’ll come to you!” And Frankie, who eats carbs and whipped cream and gummy bears for breakfast, is running like some sort of elite athlete in the 65+ category, while Grace waits, half hobbling, desperately hoping her knee won’t give out on her now. 

Then Frankie is in front of her, and all the anger slips away in the face of the person she might have lost, maybe forever, and everything Grace has been thinking comes pouring out of her. Apologies for the terrible things she’s said. Admissions that she’s become a better person, someone that most days she can stand to look at in the mirror, with Frankie at her side. And somehow it all builds to Grace, standing on the beach, waves crashing beside them and the surf inching closer and closer to their feet, holding Frankie close, calling her a best friend, a partner, telling her that she needs her. And there’s nothing simple about that need. There are no straightforward lines where Frankie can do x or be y to fulfill z. It’s a need mingled with pangs of annoyance and frustration and anger but wrapped up in what Grace is finally realizing is love, and somehow that outweighs everything else, makes it simple even when it’s not. “I need you,” Grace repeats, blinking back tears that make Frankie look blurry, even now when she’s only inches away.

“Oh, I need you too.” Frankie falls into her arms with the words, holds her tight, the last vestiges of their fight falling away the longer they stay like that. “So, let’s go home.”

A sentimental part of Grace that rarely rears its head, and even more rarely gets anything out, wants to say that she’s already there. Instead she blurts out, “Nick asked me to marry him.” In an instant, all the happiness and love in Frankie’s expression is clouded over with hurt. “I—we’re not.”

“Not getting married?”

“Not getting married. Not together.” A deep breath. “He felt like he was always competing with you. Competing and losing.” Frankie’s usual taunts about beating Nick in any way are absent. She looks cautious, and Grace wonders if the same fragile hope is demanding shelter from her too. “Maybe he’s right.” 

The quiet maybe isn’t enough to bring Frankie back to that joyous openness—not after she’s put back up those walls so few people realize she has in the face of all the pain Grace’s declaration had been poised to deliver. 

This will never be simple, and Frankie will never be Robert, assuming Grace will say yes because it follows logically. She will never be Nick, convinced so deeply of her own charms that she’ll put her heart on the line in matters of love without a moment’s hesitation. Despite the “fuck it” lifestyle, she will never be Byron, desire plainly written in every move. 

But, Grace realizes with a jolt, she can be that for Frankie, can let her see everything she’s offering—no jokes or questions about it. 

Grace steps forward, closes the distance that had pulled them apart again. Her hands find Frankie’s arms first, one coming up to hold her jaw, thumb sweeping across her cheekbone. “I’m not going anywhere this time. I promise.” A kiss to the forehead, like Frankie had asked for all those years ago, only to have Grace deny her in a moment of panic about why—dear god,  _ why _ —the thought of pressing her lips to any part of Frankie had sent her heart pounding. Then Frankie’s cheeks, one after the other. Grace pauses, waiting, centimeters away from Frankie’s mouth. “I promise,” she whispers again, the words ghosting across Frankie’s lips. Her eyes flutter shut as she leans forward, her mouth finding Frankie’s. Just one kiss. One sealed promise. One hint of what might be waiting for them. 

When she pulls back, she finds Frankie blinking at her. Everything is still and silent for a long moment.

Frankie’s hand reaches out, tangling around her own. “Let’s go home.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on Twitter and Tumblr @sapphicscholarwrites


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